You're Your Own Worst Enemy
by Aksannyi
Summary: Ziva is annoyed, and Tony has made it his mission to find out why. Not really TIVA unless you really look for it. Another commentary piece. Rated K  for one swear.


**Incoming drabble! (Maybe not quite drabble-sized, but short, in my book)**

**This thought popped into my head during work and I couldn't resist. Because I was reading some other fics earlier and a pet peeve of mine reared its ugly head and the idea sprang into motion.**

**Not really Tiva I guess, unless you really look. This is just a venting piece, if I'm being honest. You'll see why. **

**As I've said before, I do not own. **

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**YOU'RE YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY**

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It was Friday afternoon and absolutely _nothing _was going on. It was as though the entire universe (or at least the greater DC area) had conspired to make Friday afternoon as slow and painful as possible by choosing not to commit any crimes for which any NCIS agents' services would be required.

It probably wasn't a bad thing, Tony thought to himself as he sat at his computer. No crimes on Friday afternoon means the chance for a normal weekend for a change, or at least the chance to sleep in on Saturday morning. It was 1330, and if they could make it another three and a half hours, they'd be blessedly free for the entire weekend.

Tony surveyed the room. Mostly everyone was silently browsing something on their computers, himself and Ziva included. Tony wondered briefly where Gibbs and McGee had gone, but quickly remembered that they'd gone for some sort of quarterly performance review. It was just as well, on a day like today.

Ziva sat across from him, her face wrinkled as though she were fervently concentrating on something, but he could see that something else was bothering her. It seemed that the newly-American Probie was annoyed.

Against the warning alarms going off in his head, Tony got up from his desk to find out what it was that could be annoying his female Probie.

"What are you doing?" he asked, snaking his way behind her desk to look over her shoulder.

"Reading fan-fiction," she murmured, her smooth voice revealing nothing of her current irritation.

"Fan-fiction? Have you been hanging out with McGoo?" She turned to look at him then.

"No, Tony. I am bored, and some of these stories are quite good. Since I can not sit here with a book without getting a painful slap on the head, I am reading fan-fiction on the Internet to keep myself from arousing suspicion."

"Fair enough." He stopped talking, not sure if he really wanted to find out why she was angry. The rest of his brain had caught up with him, and he was realizing that perhaps confronting even a slightly annoyed Ziva may not have been the best of ideas. She solved his dilemma by interrupting his thoughts.

"May I ask you something, Tony?"

"Shoot."

"Do not tempt me." Tony's pointed look was enough to get Ziva to continue. "What is so difficult about differentiating between _your_ and _you're_? This is not complex. One of them is meant to shorten two words, so that if you take it apart and say 'you are,' placing it in the improper context makes no sense. I speak a dozen languages and I can grasp this simple concept. Why is it that these writers cannot?"

"I ... I really don't know, Ziva."

"It is really bothering me. You would think that someone who is considering themselves to be a writer in some capacity would know the complexities of the language for which they are writing, would you not?"

"I would, but maybe it's because some of these writers are young."

"How is that an excuse? This is elementary grammar, at best. It is simple stuff. Stuff that everyone should know."

"I agree." Tony was amused. Ziva, who couldn't construct a proper idiom to save her life, was a precocious grammar nazi. He wondered if she was this way with every language she spoke.

"And some of the sentence structure is appalling. Not to mention the fact that 'text speak' has apparently integrated every type of communication known to man, including literature! It is absurd." Tony had the feeling that she was about to drift off into a lengthy tangent.

"Ziva, maybe you should step away from the fan-fiction site for a little while."

"Why?"

"Well, it's kind of late, but I'm pretty hungry, and you must be, too. Lunch?"

"I suppose. Though I see right through you, Tony," she said with a smile.

"Hey, I'm just doing what I can to help. You could probably comment on those stories, or write your own commentary piece, but it isn't going to change anything. Bad grammar is everywhere. Like McDonald's. You'll never be able to escape it."

"That is ... sad," she replied, frowning.

"Yes, but as long as your overall enjoyment of reading what others write is not diminished, has it really hurt anything?"

"I suppose not," she said with the slightest hint of a smile.

"Good, let's go to lunch then," he said, heading toward the elevator. They walked in silence until the doors opened, and as they stepped into it, he added, "I'm proud of you, you know."

"What for?"

"For finally learning how to use contractions."

Thirty-five heads looked up from whatever it was they were reading as Tony's reactionary yelp rang throughout the bullpen.

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**Lol. Sorry, I do a lot of reading at work when it's slow (oh, lordy, it's slow ...) and things are starting to get to me. Stop confusing those two fucking words! It's **_**not hard! **_**And yes, this directly parallels my own experience today. I wish there were some sort of way to "flag" the pieces that had crappy grammar. I really do. **

**Reviews? Thanks in advance.**


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